Yes, spring’s coming

That pile of icy snow on the east side of the house is shrinking under the warmth of a few sunny days. People with brooms and shovels and power brushes are cleaning up the winter’s sand and dust along the roadsides. The sap is already running up the maple trunks. Spring actually will soon be with us.

But those developments are just preparatory. Where are the things that will really look and feel like spring? Still hidden but rapidly growing in buds and bulbs on trees and bushes and in the ground, that’s where. And they soon will burst forth, and we will know that spring has really arrived.

A few of those overt signs have already appeared. Look closely in some dooryards and you will see the first crocuses pushing up through the warming earth. And an early purple flower called February Daphne may have shown up in a few gardens. Next to appear will be anemones and yellow daffodils, which before long will be “fluttering and dancing in the breeze,” in Wordsworth’s image.

Bronze colored buds on the red maple twigs are swelling and will produce blossoms before long. The spectacular chestnut blossoms will come much later, well into May or early June. By that time, our hackmatacks, which others call larch or tamarack, one of the few trees that shed their needles in the fall, will be once again in full needle. The new crop soon can be seen in tiny, light green clumps along the twigs.

Among those who are watching for spring’s unveiling is Dondlin Zhang, assistant professor of horticulture at the University of Maine. He says one of the beautiful early blooms will be the candy pink rhododendron. Where can they be seen? Only in his own garden, where he is growing then by the hundred.

So enjoy the brief season, with cool breezes, its bright flowers and tiny leaves, a time before the sometimes stifling heat of summer and the big floppy leaves that keep you from seeing the profiles of the hills and glimpses of the blue lakes and ocean. And before tourist traffic clogs the roads and highways.

But first, as nature takes its annual course, the highway departments must repaint the yellow center lines and the white lines along the sides, so that once more we can see where we are driving.